N Brown mulling foreign acquisitions

The boss of Manchester-based home shopping group N Brown said he would consider takeover opportunities in Germany and the United States in two to three years' time to drive growth if trading trials prove successful. Chief executive Alan White said the firm's plan is to build its business in both countries and achieve breakeven in three years.

The boss of Manchester-based home shopping group N Brown said he would consider takeover opportunities in Germany and the United States in two to three years' time to drive growth if trading trials prove successful.

Chief executive Alan White said the firm's plan is to build its business in both countries and achieve breakeven in three years.

He also said N Brown would consider further bolt-on deals in the UK to follow its £11.5m swoop for lingerie retailer Figleaves last week.

N Brown, which targets older and larger customers through catalogues including Simply Be, Oxendales and JD Williams, launched its website and catalogue in Germany last year and will start a similar trial in the US next month.

Mr White said at a retail summit that if the trials showed the firm could recruit customers cost-effectively it would decide towards the end of the second year whether to accelerate growth by investing in more customer recruitment or by pursuing acquisitions.

“The alternative route to spending more money (on recruitment) would be to find businesses which might actually have a compatible database that we could market into to ramp up that growth,” he said.

“It's something where we're talking medium-term rather than short-term but we're actively keeping tabs in terms of what's going on in those markets.”

Mr White noted that fallout from the demise of Arcandor, owner of the Quelle home shopping business, was creating opportunities in Germany, while in the US some venture capital firms were looking to exit from their home shopping businesses.

With the US outsize market worth £23.5bn a year, success there could be transformational for N Brown.